What's Up Wednesday

 

GUYS! It happened! I had my jumping lesson on Pammon this weekend! He was PERFECT! 

Okay... well maybe not perfectly perfect, we did somehow have a rail over an 18" vertical, and I definitely didn't have a very good canter... (perhaps those two things are related?) But he didn't get wild, he jumped everything calmly, and didn't spook at all. So I think that's pretty perfect. Also, I mean, how much canter do you really want to jump speed bumps? There's not much to say about the lesson. We kept it very simple, all straight lines, and like I mentioned above, the jumps were very small. I think it was the perfect start! AND I have video!

It was a nice weekend weather-wise for riding (indoors anyway, it rained all weekend, but was in the forties so was nice and warm feeling) so I think that helped set us up for success. This week has been cold again, with feels like temps in the single digits yesterday. I forgot to put Pammon down for a free lunge yesterday before I rode so he was pretty wild (35 degree temperature drops will do that). The wind was absolutely howling which is pretty scary for a horse in the indoor by himself. We did a walk trot ride on just half of the ring. 

Yesterday's weather after I finished riding Pammon... Brrr.

He had his play time this morning before our ride, but it was still pretty chilly. I'm confident the cold weather makes his back hurt because he was really funny when I got on today and he hadn't been that way while it was warm out. It's something I started feeling with him when we had that cold snap a few weeks ago. I have him on the list to see the vet about it, but I kind of think it could be more of a chiro issue. Our body worker/chiro vet is still in Florida though, so I'll take whoever I can get to see him. He gets better as he moves around so I'm not freaking about it. He IS 14, so there's bound to be some stuff we need to maintain on him.

You try to take a nice photo...

Things are same old-same old with Eros these days. He's been a very good boy with minimal spookies. He takes awhile to warm up, but one he gets moving he is giving me some AMAZING trot work. Like huge extensions that come all the way up through his withers. It feels incredible. And I can get it both directions. The canter is still full of issues going right, but I think that's one of those things we'll be working on forever. Had an interesting revelation in our lesson last night while cantering some raised cavalletti. We were doing a circle with one raised cavalletti at the 12 and one at 6, so pretty easy. To the left, it was simple. We flowed around that circle with a lovely metronome canter just popping over the rails as the came. I kept my butt in the saddle easily. To the right? Total disaster. We chipped, we landed the wrong lead, I felt like I was thudding on his back. That is, until I got into a lighter seat. Once I took my butt out of the saddle going right, everything flowed smoothly, and it was almost as nice as the left lead had been.  Weird, right? The head trainer here is very insistent that everyone stay sitting all the time, but honestly, I don't think that works on Eros tracking right. His right lead canter is kind of a hot mess, and it's very hard to sit. I think in my trying to keep my butt in the saddle I'm actually just getting in his way and making things worse. Once I gave up that fight, he was able to get his parts working better. I'll have to play around with it some more now that I'm cognizant of it and see what we get. Stay tuned I guess?

She was reaching around for an itch, but I just love this photo of her with her eyes closed.

Shinypants I **THINK** is starting to come back around to being a good pony. While the canter transitions are still a real disaster, she is starting to move off my leg, and we are achieving forward into the contact again. Not consistently. And certainly not for the full ride. But I'll take what I can get. She still will randomly kind of shut down, but like Pammon, that seems to happen more on the cold days than the warmer ones. So I think she also feels some soreness or discomfort on the very cold days. I do think she's tripping a lot less since the next injections, and I also think the thyroid meds have started to work. I have her on the list for the vet as well to see what he thinks about our little bit of progress and if there's anything else we should do to help her along. It might just be time. Or she may still need an adjustment with the meds. But I'm not a vet, so I need some guidance! I do know from my own thyroid problems that it can take along while to get the dosage just right. For me it took over a year. So I'm hopeful we'll get her back to comfortable and happy to work again.

That's about it from here this week. How are things your way? Horses good? Have any riding breakthroughs recently?

Pammon loves the goat at the boarding barn.